Thanks
Thanks
Thanks
I’d like to share a coaching journey from this past year that I’m genuinely proud of.
About a year ago, in December, I started working with a student known on Chess.com as @TheFerociousKnight. At the time, his rating was around 1500. Almost exactly one year later, on December 21st, he peaked at 2226 — a gain of roughly 700 rating points in a year.
Progress of this magnitude is rare, and what makes it even more notable is that we were meeting once per week. In my experience, jumps like this usually involve much more frequent direct contact. This makes his consistency, discipline, and independent work between lessons especially impressive.
From the beginning, I focused on managing the entire training process, not just the weekly lesson itself. With only one session per week, it was crucial that the student had clear, structured work to do between lessons — and he always did it.
One important early decision was not to overhaul his openings. He already had a solid repertoire that suited him well. Although it differed from my own preferences and from what I teach many other students, it was clearly working for him. Instead of changing it, we focused on:
Refining existing ideas
Deepening understanding of plans
Updating concepts where needed
This allowed us to invest our main energy elsewhere.
A large part of our work centered on strategy and endgames.
We spent a lot of time clarifying:
What he is playing for in the middlegame
How plans emerge naturally from his opening structures
How to transition positions toward favorable endgames
Endgame technique, in particular, became a strength. Even in equal or slightly better endgames, he was often able to convert thanks to improved technical understanding and patience.
One of the most important elements of our work was developing good thinking habits.
A recurring theme in lessons was always asking for an alternative:
An alternative move
An alternative plan
This was something I insisted on during lessons, and over time it became automatic in his own games. That habit alone significantly improved decision-making and reduced impulsive choices.
We also created databases of recurring mistakes, revisited them regularly, and made sure the same errors didn’t keep appearing. Avoiding repeated mistakes is one of the most reliable paths to improvement.
Tactically, he was extremely consistent. He completed all assigned puzzle work and also trained tactics independently. As a result, calculation and visualization skills improved naturally over time, without needing forced intervention.
Our lessons were always efficient and productive. He came prepared, asked thoughtful questions, and sometimes requested specific topics for future sessions — whether related to certain openings or uncomfortable types of positions. We made sure not to move on until those areas felt genuinely solid to him.
That feedback loop — identify discomfort → address it → confirm confidence — was an important part of the process.
This journey is a great example of what can happen when:
Structure meets consistency
Feedback is applied honestly
Good habits are built early
The student takes ownership of the work
I’m extremely proud of the progress @TheFerociousKnight has made this year, and I’m excited to see how his journey continues.
(Shared from my perspective as his coach. Public profile: @TheFerociousKnight.)
I started playing chess as an adult about a year ago after finding chess.com and having fun playing chess. I spent about 6 months on my own attempting to get better, but started to feel stuck at about 1400, and wanted a way to learn in a more time efficient way than trying books. I decided to give lessons a try, and found Kestony's content compelling. I've been impressed with my first 6 months of lessons with Kestony regarding my improvement in understanding thought process, developing plans, identifying weaknesses/imbalances, and tactical pattern recognition. Kestony has done a good job learning about me and tailoring the lessons/homework to what works for me and my available time. His experience teaching means he has content ready for a lot of situations that might come up, which also makes it easier to tailor the content to me with the time we have. I personally felt when looking for an instructor that it was more important to me to find someone with a lot of experience coaching who's expertise would be helping players improve than someone who was incredible at chess like a GM, but to each their own in that regard. My goal in doing lessons was to feel like I was learning about the game in a time efficient way, and in that respect i feel my understanding of the game has improved orders of magnitude. To avoid a completely subjective assessment, I've gained at time of writing ~275 elo in Rapid after 6 months of lessons.
For free?